(and those numbers probably aren't wrong, but don't exist for many or most.) 

6 people aren't enough people to be worth saving?

That said, inspection fees for deals that didn’t work out and mileage from property viewings before actually purchasing a rental property aren’t considered start-up costs.

Hi @Tim Holt I think in general house hacking is usually a good move because it gets you off the sidelines and into the game with the most favorable financing possible (30 year fixed).There's a lot of value in getting started today vs waiting some undefined number of years until conditions are better, which could be a long time from now, because real estate is a business and the sooner you start actually learning about that business, the better.With all that said, I always recommend that people analyze any potential house hack as a pure investment that they aren't going to live in, because someday they may want to move out and you should know up front (before you commit) whether you're going to be able to do that, or whether you're overpaying and will be stuck in the property unable to move out because it'll be cash flow negative if you do.So you had it exactly right when you wrote, "the property would need to cash flow when I move out and rent out all units."

Taking the doors off of the rooms when the appraiser comes so that they aren't rooms.

Also remember, you aren’t creating deductions.

If not, aren't you going to need to buy something else or are you just going to rent yourself? 

My husband and I (ok...my husband) are pretty handy, so we aren't afraid of doing a lot of work ourselves, and I know dealing Iowa winters will mean we need to take some precautionary measures, but it seems like low cost of entry for investing (we just got our first SFH this fall)

Make sure the numbers so that if you put in 60k to 70k you're getting some sort of annual net profit so you aren't having to feed the investment. 

You increase rents every year rents aren’t dropping.